« Minimun wage and Living wage and Tailored Wages: an introduction to the survey»
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT MINIMUM AND LIVING WAGE? CAN ALL WORKERS AFFORD LIVING?
In this part we are going to explain you what is really happening around the world with wages.
Are we all worth the same?
Apparently, this doesn’t apply in some parts of the world.
We were able to analyze this problem comparing different
countries.
First of all, you should know the difference between:
MINIMUM WAGE
Minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers
must legally pay their workers. It is the price floor below which workers might not sell their labor.
LIVING WAGE
A living wage means that a working person must be able to support itself and its family with it.
The definition of living wage is explained in the international human right discourse.
In fact the 23rd article of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.”.
A living wage should allow a person to afford the basics
for quality of life, such as food, rent, education, clothing,
transport, health care and savings. The gap between the
legal minimum wage and a living wage is ever growing
and not all the difficulties for income-poor workers are
concerned only to money matters. If a worker’s salary
for a standard working week is not enough to cover the
basic needs for them and their family, they face other poverty-related problems.
SITUATION IN ASIA:
This problem in mainly found in some areas of Africa and Asia. To understand more, we refer to follow data concerning Asia:
With regard to this situation, was founded in Asia a global coalition of trade unions, workers rights and human rights organization that is actively trying to change this and it is called “Asia Floor Wage Alliance”.
According to some survey, it discovered that the garment industry in Asia provides millions of job to millions of women and men, making the region economy grow. But this rapid growth has come at a price – and only the workers are paying it.Poverty wages are, of course, not limited to the Asian garment industry. Legal minimum wages in Eastern European countries are sometimes lower than Asian wages, and in many Eastern European countries, minimum wages fall even below the subsistence level that respective governments have defined. The call for a living wage is therefore a global call for a fair share of the earnings, and for that reason we have looked in this survey at policies, practices and strategies of companies across their entire supply chains worldwide.
A part of Asia Floor Wage (AFW), the “Clean Clothes Campaign”, has calculated a living wage-formula for Asia. It is calculated based on some key assumptions that we believe must always be central to a living wage:
• A living wage is always a family wage.
• A living wage must allow to save.
• A living wage has to guarantee a minimum income for all workers.
SITUATION IN EUROPE:
In 22 out of 28 EU Member States, a generally applicable statutory minimum wage exists; the level of this minimum wage varies greatly from one country to another. This article provides information on statutory minimum wage levels, how the minimum wage has been determined for 2017 and minimum wage coverage across the EU. The data show that the minimum wage grew more over the year preceding 1 January 2017 than the year before.
The UN has founded an organization, which promotes decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity for men and women. Its main objectives are: to promote workers' rights, to encourage employment in decent conditions, to improve social protection and to get stronger dialogue on labor issues.
SITOGRAPHY:
